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Article
Archives 2005 » Vitamins and Supplements |
| Fattening Foods:
Not So Fattening After All?
Have you seen those "fat free" foods in supermarkets?
Have you possibly delighted in them guiltlessly thinking
that they are healthy for you? There's a good chance
that you have because we usually follow what the media
and the world around us says. In this day in age, along
with other health fads, many people believe that fat
makes you fat. This is true, to an extent. What we fail
to notice is that not all fats are bad.
If I had to guess, since the words fat (as in what's
in food) and fat (as in excess body tissue, or adipose
tissue) are the same word it makes sense that when you
eat fat, you get fat. However, this is not the case.
Now don't get me wrong, there is a difference between
good fats and bad fats. If you eat the bad fats they
can make you fat,
and also contribute to several diseases. Your body uses
the good fats in several ways to repair itself, grow,
and work more efficiently.
Some of the benefits of eating these healthy fats include:
-Healthy fats are essential for absorption of fat-soluble
vitamins
-Healthy fats have an anti-inflammatory effect - they
can help relieve many of the pains that we experience
around our joints
-Healthy fats are essential for lubrication of our joints
-Healthy fats improve insulin sensitivity. Insulin is
the hormone our bodies use to transport nutrients throughout
the body. Insulin sensitivity is essentially a measure
of how efficient our bodies use insulin. Insulin resistance
is the opposite of insulin sensitivity and is one of
the early stages of diabetes.
-Healthy fats can increase the strength of our immune
system
-Healthy fats play a major role in the production of
energy from foods we consume
-Healthy fats are required for our body to efficiently
use oxygen
-Healthy fats can improve skin texture
-Healthy fats can increase your metabolism
-Healthy fats can help you burn more fat (the kind that
is attached to your body)
Dr. Udo Erasmus, author of one of the most popular books
ever about fat, "Fats the Heal, Fats that Kill",
writes in his book, "At levels above 12 to 15%
of total calories, healthy fats increase the rate of
metabolic reactions in the body and the increased rate
burns off more fat into carbon dioxide, water, and energy
(heat), resulting in fat burn off and loss of excess
weight."
In this article we will discuss what exactly these healthy
fats are, where to get them from, easy ways to add them
into your diet, and the optimal amount of fat that you
should consume. I will also explain why the belief that
"fats make you fat" has developed because
fats can make you fat if you eat too many of them.
The Bad Fats
-Trans Fats
Trans fats are made by bubbling hydrogen through unsaturated
fats in order to make them solid and have a longer shelf
life. In addition, it was once thought that trans fats
were a healthier alternative to saturated fats. However,
this is far from the truth. In a statement made by the
Bush Administration they warn us to keep consumption
of trans fats "as low as possible" and also
state that "the food industry has an important
role in decreasing trans fatty acid content of the food
supply."
Some of the top Harvard nutritionists state that replacing
trans fats with a safer alternative would "prevent
approximately 30,000 premature coronary deaths per year."
In fact, Denmark has already taken an initiative and
banned the sale of trans fats to not allow more than
2% of the food to contain trans fats.
Now that you know that trans fats are bad, how do you
avoid them? In America, the FDA has required food manufacturers
to list the number of trans fats a food contains. This
has helped consumers make wiser choices, but according
to FDA regulation, "if the serving contains less
than 0.5 gram, the content, when declared, shall be
expressed as zero." This rule allows food manufacturers
to list very small serving sizes and as long as the
amount of trans fats is less than 0.5 grams in that
particular serving, they are allowed to list it as 0
grams of trans fats.
The ultimate way to tell if a food contains trans fats
or not is if the ingredients list contains the phrase
"partially hydrogenated" or "shortening".
Trans fats are mostly contained in foods such as candies,
cookies, snack foods, chips, shortenings, and many restaurants.
-Saturated Fats
Saturated fats are widely recognized as being bad fats.
You probably know or believe this to be true, and it
is to an extent. There is actually quite a controversy
between many dieticians and nutritionists about saturated
fats concerning the optimal amount that we should consume
or if we should even consume them at all. The reason
for most of the bad rap that saturated fat has been
given is due to the fact that the liver uses it to produce
cholesterol. It has been noted to raise the good (HDL)
cholesterol as well as the bad (LDL) cholesterol. The
FDA's general guideline for saturated fat is to limit
it to about 10% of total calories per day. This would
convert to about 20 grams per day for diet containing
about 2,000 calories per day.
Saturated fat is mostly found in foods that are derived
from animals. The exception would be coconut, palm,
and palm kernel oils, which also contain saturated fat.
The Healthy Fats
-Monounsaturated Fats
Monounsaturated fat is believed to help lower the bad
cholesterol (LDL) and raise the good (HDL) cholesterol.
As listed in the beginning of this article, they also
provide many healthy benefits.
Monounsaturated fats are mostly found in vegetable oils.
Some examples would include olive oil and canola oil.
-Polyunsaturated Fats
Polyunsaturated fats contain the family of fats known
as Essential Fatty Acids, or EFAs. As you can tell by
their name, these fats are essential to the body because
the body cannot produce them on its own. The main EFAs
are the Omega-3 fatty acid and the Omega-6 fatty acid.
They provide many of the benefits listed at the beginning
of this article as well. Good sources of these fatty
acids are fish, mustard seeds, pumpkin seeds, walnut
oil, leafy green vegetables, sunflower, soybean, avocados,
and perhaps one of the best sources is flax seed (make
sure to grind them or buy them in an oil form - the
stomach has trouble digesting the whole seeds).
-Why Fat Supposedly Makes You Fat
There is a simple law known as the Law of Thermodynamics.
In addition to this, our bodies burn a certain number
of calories per day (this number changes everyday and
is influenced by many factors). This burning of calories
everyday is known as total daily energy expenditure
or TDEE. If the amount of calories we eat in a certain
day is below our TDEE, we lose weight (this weight is
not necessarily fat all the time). If the amount of
calories we eat is equal to our TDEE, our weight stays
the same. If the amount of calories we eat is greater
than our TDEE, we gain weight (as stated before, this
weight is not necessarily fat all the time - it could
be muscle). Many people skip this important fundamental
and look at the type of food they are eating or several
other factors before they investigate how many calories
they are eating per day and how to adjust their amount
of calories consumed to achieve their goals.
Fat holds 9 calories per gram, while carbohydrates and
protein hold only 4 calories per gram. This means that
eating fat (any type of fat, even the good kind) will
result in a greater number of calories consumed. Therefore,
it's more likely that you're going to go over your TDEE
and gain weight, especially if much of your diet comes
from fattening foods. In addition to this, fat is very
similar chemically to the fat that your body stores.
This makes it easy for your body to store consumed fat
as fat (adipose tissue), but you must take into consideration
that storing fat (consumed) as fat (adipose tissue)
is not the only thing your body does with fat (consumed).
-The Optimal Levels of Fat
You're going to want to eat part of your calories from
fat to get their many benefits, but not go too high.
Like anything else in the world of nutrition and fitness,
there are many opinions on what the optimal levels of
fat in the diet are. For instance, advocates of low-fat
diets opt for absolutely no fat and believe that fat
is what makes us fat. However, there is a flaw in this
belief as they are also cutting out the good, numerously
beneficial fats. Then there are high fat diets, such
as diets suggesting low carbs (they usually say you
can eat all the fat and protein you want). Although,
it is generally accepted to consume between 15% - 25%
of your calories from fat while severely limiting the
amount of trans fats and watching the amount of saturated
fat that you consume.
-Some Easy Ways to Add Fat Into Your Diet
Now you may be wondering how you're going to add some
of these healthy fats into your diet.
There are actually some really easy ways to do so. If
you eat salads, you can add about a tablespoon of olive
or canola oil. In my experience, you usually cannot
even taste these added oils. If you buy some flax seed
and grind it, you can add it to almost any food. Once
again, these flax seeds are mostly tasteless. Really,
adding these healthy nutrients into your diet isn't
that big of a burden.
About the Author
You can find more weight loss information, articles,
reviews, calculators, and more at this website about
weight
loss.
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